Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary

Cummings conducts his campaign against the Japanese brilliantly, moving his men closer to the Toyaku line, but five weeks after the invasion Croft's platoon have still seen no action, having been involved in building a road. As the weather gets hotter and the rainy season approaches, the men begin to think that fighting would be preferable to the monotony of sitting around and building roads.

Red, Wilson and Gallagher are smoking and talking in their tent, which is a trench in the ground covered with two ponchos on a bamboo ridgepole. The three men talk, and as he remembers his past Gallagher gets angry, because however hard he tries, nothing ever goes right for him. He would have got a job in the post office if it had not been for a Jewish alderman getting the position for his nephew. He...